The work’s primitive ostinati and pseudo-mediaevalism also appealed to the fascist mentality, making it the musical equivalent of Albert Speer’s monstrous architecture for Hitler’s proposed capital Germania, or Leni Riefenstahl’s Nuremburg rally documentaries. As a teenager, I always found it among the most exciting scores ever composed. We’re all young once… This performance is relatively low-powered, especially in comparison to Muti’s Philharmonia and Frühbeck de Burgos’s high-octane accounts, which feature the greatly lamented Lucia Popp and Arleen Augér respectively (both EMI). The orchestra sound here is quite recessed, which lessens its contribution to the essential velocity of this piece. That the orchestra concerned is the Bavarian Radio Symphony, who, of all ensembles, should be at home in this “Bavarian” music, is all the more regrettable. The results are much more satisfactory in the quieter, more poetic passages, of which there are many. The soloists are more than adequate, with Patricia Petibon (normally more associated with Chabrier and Poulenc!) coping well with the ethereal heights of Dulcissime; Hans Werner Bunz does his dying swan with all the requisite grotesquerie but it’s the uncanny resemblance of baritone Christian Gerhaher’s voice to that of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau that stopped me in my tracks. Nonetheless,…

The Arcantos bring a special distinction to everything they play, and this recording is no different.

Mahler’s First was one of them. I vividly recall the normally somnolent Thursday afternoon audience rising to its feet to cheer after his 2002 performance. Sadly, neither that, nor the 2008 reprise, has ever been issued. I think his reading had both more Innigkeit and sheer élan than this reading by Ashkenazy, who I doubt has anything particularly interesting to say in this work. The opening string shimmer lacks mystery and expectancy. Is this, perhaps, because he’s a pianist, not a violinist and can’t convey the importance of a sustained string tremolo? The Wayfarer theme goes well enough but, overall, there is little sense of verdant nature awakening to a new day. The Scherzo needs more of what Germans call Schwung (“oomph”), and the trio should resemble an inebriated swoon, which doesn’t quite happen here. In the klezmer-meets-Kurt Weill third movement, again, the music is played a little too straight. The final sprawling movement is always a challenge and Ashkenazy and co. don’t sweep the field here either. Even the famous molto expressivo string passage sounds slightly perfunctory in their hands. Leonard Bernstein is, as usual in Mahler, wonderful in both his recordings, but my favourite performance is Guilini’s in…

Much of his church music, admittedly, lacks any more than a hint of introspection, spirituality or light and shade. One always has the impression that in Haydn’s take on Catholicism a good time was had by all. Even the supposedly darker Missa in tempore belli, nicknamed the “Timpani Mass”, really becomes ominous only with the menacing timpani figures in the Agnus Dei depicting Napoleon’s army besieging south-east Austria. Otherwise, only the unsettled minor key mood of the Benedictus undermines the otherwise joyful mood. Interestingly, the man whom Beethoven a few years later considered (initially at least) to be a liberator was viewed by the more conventional Haydn as a threat to civilisation. That said, performances of this calibre deserve an unreserved welcome. These two works were composed 24 years apart, the Mariazellermesse in 1782 as a celebration of the ennoblement of a prominent Catholic, a retired army officer who organised Marian pilgrimages. Owen Burdick and his forces (the Trinity Choir refers to the Trinity Episcopal Church in Wall Street, Manhattan, not Trinity College, Cambridge) and REBEL Baroque orchestra are agile and idiomatic in this music while, among the soloists, the men are adequate but the real star in both masses…

Angela Hewitt has made a seamless and very successful transition from Bach to Schumann with her usual poise, precision, imagination and humanity. The Davidsbündlertänze are, even by Schumann’s standards, a poetic masterpiece. Hewitt is across every nuance, capturing the strangely off-centre melody of the first dance, the even stranger syncopation of the tarantella No 6 and the jolly polka of No 12 to perfection. In the penultimate number, Wie aus der Ferne (“As from afar”) the melody starts without a break from the previous section and then develops into a melancholy ländler. In Kinderszenen (“Scenes from Childhood”), sample the final section Der Dichter spricht (“The poet speaks”), savour the uniquely German quality of Innigkeit or “inner depths” Hewitt brings to this enchanting music. Time really does stand still here. The Second Sonata is more problematic. Although generally regarded as his best keyboard sonata, the form didn’t suit Schumann’s essentially dreamy nature and instinctively discursive expression. What some may see as excessive dramatic urgency I felt sounded more like relentless headlong impetuosity, although this is no reflection on Hewitt’s playing. The lovely song-like slow movement radiates a rapt tenderness. A lovely CD, beautifully recorded.

Johan Halvorsen was always an essential mention on any “one hit wonders” list of classical composers, known exclusively for his Entry of the Boyars. I missed Volume 1 of this series but I’m just as enthusiastic about Volume 2 as everyone seemed to be about its predecessor. Grieg himself loved these scores. Much of the music (Three Norwegian Dances, Air Norvégian and Chant de Veslemöy) features violin solos, delightfully played here by Marianne Thorsen. The second longest piece is the Suite ancienne, formed from entr’acts for the incidental music for Holberg’s (as in Grieg’s Holberg suite) play The Lying-in Room. It’s a skilful pastiche of 18th-century dance forms. My assessment of Halvorsen as a Nordic Eric Coates or Leroy Anderson was completely confounded when I heard the Second Symphony: it reinforced my amazement at how many seriously first-rate symphonies were composed by seriously obscure composers. This one is a little gem, with a recurring “fate” motive in all four movements (à la Tchaikovsky), a delicious oboe melody in the slow movement, reminiscent of the one in the slow movement of Bizet’s Symphony and a lovely intermezzo. All in under 28 minutes. An absolute winner!

Again, their readings are marked by a seemingly infinite variety of inflections, astutely calculated nuances and exquisitely judged tempi. Listen to the way they play the deliberately out-of-sync notes in the Spring Sonata’s tiny scherzo (all 81 seconds of it, displaying Beethoven’s rather tentative approach to the idea of the four-movement sonata!), or the delightfully delicate way they negotiate the finale to the Op 12 No 2, when the piano reaches the end one bar later than the violinist. Hilary Finch, in her excellent sleeve notes, writes of the melody in the first movement of the Spring Sonata as “irresistibly vernal, creative sap rising freely…” which makes the drama of the second half of the movement all the more effectively contrasted. For all these delights, my greatest interest lay in the Op 96, Beethoven’s last Violin Sonata. Unlike the symphonies, piano sonatas and string quartets, Beethoven’s violin sonatas did not penetrate his “late” period, so this work is as close as we get. Nonetheless, it’s still enigmatic: its opening trill always seems to come out of silence as the continuation of music which has already begun. The overall mood of the work is lyrical, with a delightfully spiky scherzo, realized…

This Bach-meets-Paganini tour de force begins with a prelude marked Obsession, presumably about the shadow Bach had cast over this music, but the finale Les Furies falls back on the famous Dies irae theme. In the Chausson Poème, Mordkovich is smoulderingly passionate. The jewel in the crown is the Shostakovich Sonata, Op 134 for Violin and Piano. The composer had written his Second Violin Concerto as a 60th birthday present for Oistrakh but got the years wrong and this sonata was composed for his real 60th birthday. It distills the ambience of the twilight world where ambiguity flourishes amid a thicket of coded messages, no doubt understood by Oistrakh but missed by the musical commissars. The first movement flirts, ironically, with the twelve-tone technique (strictly forbidden by the regime) in the first movement. The central allegretto consciously eschews contemplation for a manic moto perpetuo but the third movement presents a complex passacaglia (theme and variations) of increasing intensity and complexity. Again, a reference to Bach’s solo violin style emerges, this time fused with a sort of Rachmaninov-like effusiveness, only to subside ultimately into a withdrawn coda. Powerful stuff! David Oistrakh would have been proud.

Hermann Goetz spent most of his life under the shadow of TB, which claimed him just before he turned 36. Judging by his letters, Goetz was as polite and charming as this concerto. Thankfully, the orchestration, so often thick and unoriginal, is refreshingly transparent and the melodies fall gratefully on the ear. If I had to guess the composer, I’d say Max Bruch, although there are inevitable echoes of Schumann and Chopin. The first movement ambles along genially and the second is delightful in a sentimental way. Things liven up slightly in the finale but, come on guys, at 41 minutes this work is only seven minutes shorter than your average Brahms Second Piano Concerto, and look at how much he managed to pack into that! The other work, by Józef Wieniawski, brother of the more famous violin virtuoso and composer Henryk, was actually composed almost a decade earlier than Goetz’s, but seems more modern. I can’t agree with the sleeve note writer that the character of this work represents Sturm und Drang, implying a fusion of tension and drama, and a relentless barrage of bravura playing. I found it only slightly more energetic than its companion. Both works are…

Zráni (Ripening) is one of a number of deeply felt compositions – inspired by the rapid deaths of Suk’s wife and of Dvorák (Suk’s father-in-law) – that could loosely be described as being in the “triumph of the human spirit over tragedy” genre. This kaleidoscopic score demands virtuoso playing and it certainly receives it here. The BBC Symphony seems to have assimilated a genuinely Czech sound into their playing, even though some of the more histrionic sections of this score are heavily reminiscent of Richard Strauss. Its quiet opening is beautiful. Having said that, I think Zráni, at 38 minutes, is just too long, especially with such a rambling structure and virtually no program. With such an eventful score, the inclusion of a brief chorus towards the end seems strangely superfluous! The early E major symphony is another matter altogether. It radiates the same fresh alfresco sonorities as Dvorák’s best symphonic works. The lyrical first movement and the exuberant yet slightly demonic scherzo both contain some lovely themes, and the slow movement has a noble quality. The finale is a slight problem, however. Initially, it trips along with a wonderfully catchy “traveling” tune which would have done Suk’s father- in-law…

First, I should point out that the set does not include Urlicht (Primeval Light) and there are no duets, but, apart from that, I needn’t have worried: these are finely performed, idiomatic accounts. Certainly, Boulez doesn’t see quite as much humour in the piece as, say, Tennstedt (EMI) and is, predictably, more at home in the darker numbers. But his soloists are both excellent. I’ve never been a fan of Kožená but here she’s charming, without being arch, and displays amazing breath control in the seemingly interminable “yodeling” effects in Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?, which Boulez takes at a dangerously slow tempo. Gerhaher is superb throughout, his lighter baritone exuding plenty of swagger and braggadocio in the martial numbers without the hectoring quality which occasionally obtruded into Fischer-Dieskau’s versions. The final song segues perfectly into the Adagio of the unfinished Tenth Symphony (an interview in the booklet reveals Boulez has no truck with the various “realisations” of the work) and here both conductor and orchestra are at their finest. This version represents both an apocalyptic vision and the anguished beauty, not only of Mahler’s oeuvre, but of all Romantic music in its exquisite death throes. The sound is so…

Volume 1 is a complete cycle of the Beethoven sonatas, which do not traverse the same range of styles or psychological landscapes as the piano sonatas, string quartets, or symphonies.